Moscow woman sets apartment on fire as bailiffs arrive to evict her

A 68-year-old woman in Moscow’s Babushkinsky district set fire to her apartment as bailiffs arrived to evict her, according to the Msk1 news outlet.

The fire broke out around 10 a.m. on August 5 on the second floor of a five-story building on Menzhinsky Street. Russian television channel NTV identified the woman as Natalia Ivanova.

According to Msk1, Ivanova sold her two-room apartment for 9.5 million rubles in 2022, gave the money to scammers, and never moved out. A court ruled in favor of the apartment’s new owner, and the eviction was scheduled for August 5, 2026.

Video published by Msk1 shows bailiffs and several other people standing at the entrance to the apartment, while Ivanova asks where she is supposed to put her belongings, saying she has no money to move them. She then sprayed a liquid and set the apartment on fire.

Ivanova was taken to the Sklifosovsky Institute. According to the Telegram channel Mash, which is linked to Russian security services, she suffered burns covering 70% of her body. Firefighters evacuated a neighbor from an apartment on the third floor.

Independent outlet Mediazona found that Ivanova had been detained on October 4, 2022, after throwing a Molotov cocktail at a draft office on Dmitrovskoe Highway under the influence of scammers. In court, she said that at the time of the crime, she believed she was acting solely in the interest of and to protect the state.

Ivanova said that starting September 1, 2022, she received calls from scammers posing as officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service and central bank, and eventually gave them her savings along with the proceeds from her apartment sale. On October 4, shortly after mobilization began, a man who claimed to be an FSB officer called and told her she needed to “serve the motherland.”

In 2025, a court handed Ivanova a two-year suspended sentence under Russia’s criminal statute against hooliganism.